Thursday, March 27, 2008

How heavy metal prepares you for heavy emotions

There is more to manipulating our emotional state than simply trying to feel good. That's the conclusion of a new psychological study, suggesting that we will deliberately seek out experiences that make us angry before facing a "confrontational" situation.

In the April issue of Psychological Science, researchers led by Maya Tamir of Boston College explain how they asked student volunteers to play computer games - either the first-person shooter Soldier of Fortune, or Diner Dash, in which players must guide a waitress serving customers.

Beforehand, the students could choose to recall events from their past, or listen to various types of music - "angry" tunes such as Inquisition Symphony by the uncompromising Finnish cello-metal band Apocalyptica; "exciting" numbers including Bim Bam Bum by the self-styled "Latin Dance King" of the 1930s and 40s, Xavier Cugat; or "neutral" compositions, such as Lava by the down-tempo German duo Boozoo Bajou.

Before playing Soldier of Fortune, the students were more likely to recall events that made them feel angry, or to listen to the angry music. What's more, doing so improved their scores on the game.

This suggests that people will manipulate their emotions, even if it isn't the most pleasurable thing to do, to achieve an end result. But the researchers admit that more work is needed to determine the societal relevance of these findings.

For one thing, the volunteers were all male (chosen because of their greater familiarity with computer games), so whether women would behave similarly remains to be seen. How the ability to obtain high scores on Soldier of Fortune relates to real-world situations other than armed combat is also unclear, for now.

As a next step, Tamir and her colleagues suggest testing their ideas in the context of "aggressive sports". Maybe they should recruit the famously combative former England defender Stuart "Psycho" Pearce, who reportedly used to treat his soccer teammates to a selection of punk classics before key games.

Could similar tactics work for those of us in other walks of life?

A few years back, while in a job that involved some "interesting" challenges in personnel management, I used to listen to AC/DC's Back in Black on the way to work. It didn't make me angry - just more pumped-up with self-confidence - but it was a deliberate exercise in emotional manipulation.

I completely agree. I was listening to a discussion about what tennis players listen to before coming out onto the court at Wimbledon, and whilst most people were listening to things like the Black Eyed Peas - "lets get it started", or "eye of the tiger" to get themselves pumped up, good old Tim Henman was listening to Kate Bush "Don't give up". I wonder what effect it would have had on his game had he listened to something with a bit of gumption!

I actually developed 'prescriptive' playlists to deal with an editor who greeted every idea with a dismissive NO: calm mid-tempo songs to stop me fuming at work, upbeat tunes for the walk home while I plotted my escape. I still left that job with damaged confidence, but the music got me through the difficult moments with a bit more grace than I might otherwise have mustered.

So for me it worked for calming and confidence boosting (confrontation I was trying to avoid). But if I'm glum, sad music paradoxically cheers me up. Perhaps it's company for my misery.

I don't really find that music effects my mood greatly. If I like a song it'll uplift me no matter what it sounds like, whether it's "Towing Jehovah" by metalcore brutalists Converge or some laid-back post-rock from The Six Parts Seven. Music only makes me feel truly aggressive when something awful comes on the radio such as James "lack of originality" Blunt.

There's an implication in the article that anger is an unpleasant emotion... I think this is a judgement call that reflects bias about the nature of emotions and the writer's and many other people's judgement of them. It seems to me that people's responses to movies and music suggest that the judgement hierarchies of emotion and pleasure responses are more complicated than the attitudes expressed by this writer and the norms we see in the expressed in cultural stereotypes

Yep, 15 minutes in the car on the way to work with something up like chemical brothers is enough to psych me up & set a good mood for the day. If I listen to something angry or depressing on the way, then that's what sort of day follows, so I don't! Been doing this for at least the last 10 years .

When I used to commute a long way my old job, I used to vent my spleen when I felt particularly irritated with therapeutic doses of heavy and death metal (Pantera, Sikth, Slipknot, Meshugga). After a while though I’d feel a bit worn out by it, and then would switch to some up tempo jazz or fusion to bring me back ‘up’. And if, at the end of a bad week, I felt in a low mood (not angry, just a bit bummed out), I had a song that almost invariably put things right: a live version of Tiempo de Festival, by the Dave Weckl Band (other songs have a similar effect, but I have strong memories of this working on more than one occasion – another example would be jazz pianist Gonzalo Rubalcaba’s rendition of the jazz standard Caravan). For me, the key to the efficacy of this song (in common with others) is that it is performed by a bunch of virtuoso musicians letting rip with some very intricate, detailed and exceptionally melodic phrasing. It also has the virtue of lasting for nearly 13 minutes, and I found that following the details of the structured and syncopated riffs, and the improvised solo sections, over the length of the song worked as a sort of meditation – I would become completely absorbed in the piece, and if I closed my eyes and really concentrated on everything going on I would soon feel elevated (so much so that I actually wrote to the keyboard player on this version, Steve Weingart, to say what an awesome effect his solo had on me!). I’m not religious or New Agey, but music, listened to in the right way (right for me, that is) has a deeply, emotion-altering numinous quality.

I'm a fiction writer. I'm getting used to rejections, but I still deal with the more disappointing ones with Chuwumbamumba. "I get knicked down, but I get up again. You ain't never going to keep me down."

You all couldnt be more right that music affects us. I use metal if Im upset at a girl. I use metal when I just accomplished something. It helps me up when Im feeling down and it takes me to new heights when Im already happy and pumped up, ready to go!Music is involved in every aspect of my life... I also recall past events depending on what song I hear.